Overcoming Software problems on the day

[Thomas Sprinkmeier]

Doubtlessly there will be software problems on the day.

How about a bootable USB with the necessary software pre-installed,
and/or a 'server' with VNC/SSH-X access.

If stuff does not work, bring a USB and 'dd' across the image from
the bootable one.

If that does not work then SSH into the 'server' (or use VNC if you
don't have SSH and X available for some reason *cough* legacy Windows
OS *cough*).
With eough USB hubs a single 'server' should be able to run quite a
few arduinos.

Thoughts/suggestions/improvements?

Thomas

[David Z]

On Nov 9, 5:31 pm, Thomas Sprinkmeier <thomas.sprinkme...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Doubtlessly there will be software problems on the day.
>
> How about a bootable USB with the necessary software pre-installed,
> and/or a 'server' with VNC/SSH-X access.

LiveCD seems like the easier route, given USB sticks are a fair bit
more. Wouldn't take much to adjust, say, Ubuntu 9.10 LiveCD to include
the appropriate bits of the IDE and compilers. It wouldn't be very
quick tho, and people may not understand the work is not saved.

I also liked the idea in another thread of a VM image so you can
quickly run that up. Although, USB out of VirtualBox is sometimes a
bit quirky :)

[Vik Olliver]

On 01/01/70 wrote:
> LiveCD seems like the easier route, given USB sticks are a fair bit
> more. Wouldn't take much to adjust, say, Ubuntu 9.10 LiveCD to include
> the appropriate bits of the IDE and compilers. It wouldn't be very
> quick tho, and people may not understand the work is not saved.

It is possible that the LCA organisers are handing out USB sticks. Maybe
we could integrate with them?

If too much like hard work, then CD it :)

Vik :v)

[Glynn Foster]

It's possible the software could go onto the USB stick, though we'd
probably rather keep the content low given we're going to have to
spend a while flashing 800 of them. Perhaps a download server on site
that folks could grab the software from with their stick?


Glynn

[Thomas Sprinkmeier]

2009/11/19 David Z <tgk...@gmail.com>:

USB out of any VM can eb a bit quirky.
Best bet it to attach the device as a serial port.

You could always boot your VM off the bootable USB/CD :-)

Thomas

[Andy Gelme]

hi All,

Thomas Sprinkmeier wrote:
> Doubtlessly there will be software problems on the day.

> USB out of any VM can eb a bit quirky.

I'd suggest that we group attendees in pairs, who work together.

This will alleviate several problems ...

1) At least one of the pair should have a working Arduino environment on
their laptop (prepared prior to the LCA). If someone's environment is
broken, we don't waste time fixing it then (maybe do that one evening
during LCA) ... and pair them with someone who does have a working
environment.

2) Sometimes people don't listen and miss important details (wasting
more time asking for things to be repeated) or may mis-understand. If
attendees are working as pairs, there is a better chance that one of
them heard and can inform the other.

3) Attempt to pair a more experienced hardware attendee with a less
experienced attendee. Thus, spreading the support load.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I don't think that creating a special Arduino IDE environment on either
a Live CD, USB stick or Virtual Machine is the way to go. Simply,
because that is not the environment that attendees will use when they go
home.

We should be putting attendees the best position to continue working on
their Arduino / Pebble after LCA ... and that means encouraging them to
attempt to set-up their Arduino IDE on their native operating system,
prior to attending LCA ... and going home with that working.

I think that we should make recommendations regarding the various Linux
distributions, Mac OS X and Windows ... and suggest the minimum
versions, installation approach and things to look out for.

For example ... Fedora 11 or 12, Ubuntu 9.04+, Max OS X 10.5 or 10.6,
etc. And, let people know which FTDI drivers to use.

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[Luke Weston]

> For example ... Fedora 11 or 12, Ubuntu 9.04+, Max OS X 10.5 or 10.6,
> etc. And, let people know which FTDI drivers to use.

Most people should (*should*) be able to just plug and play with the
FTDI devices... the drivers should already be part of the OS and it
should just work.
I've never had a problem with MacOS 10.x and relatively recent Linux.

But then again if people are using old distros, or Windows, then
manual installation may be required.

Just for reference, the FTDI drivers are here:

http://ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

You want a Virtual Com Port (VCP) driver, for a FT232R device.

[Andy Gelme]

hi Luke,

Luke Weston wrote:
>> For example ... Fedora 11 or 12, Ubuntu 9.04+, Max OS X 10.5 or 10.6,
>> etc. And, let people know which FTDI drivers to use.
>
> Most people should (*should*) be able to just plug and play with the
> FTDI devices

We know what *should* happen.

We also know (from experience) what *will* happen !

It is prudent to expect that some number of attendees will have issues
... and we need a plan to deal with that.

Having a list of all risks (things that will likely go wrong) ... with
contingency plans / solutions is vital.

We already know that what we are doing is outside of what would normally
be tackled at a software conference. And, for many of us, it's
occurring in another country, so we won't have our local support
network, local knowledge ... or the ability to jump in a car, drive home
and pick up something that we forgot !